HILLARY CLINTON: IMMORAL OR AMORAL?
Much of Hillary Clinton’s conduct has not involved issues of morality. She has been a poseur, playing the role of victimized, yet forgiving wife, during the Lewinsky scandal.
She has been a hypocrite, castigating the President for warrantless surveillance but using purloined tapes to her own political advantage. She has been a paranoid, complaining to the world about the alleged “right wing conspiracy.” She has been a conniver, ousting career White House travel office employees in favor of her cronies. She has been a dilettante, presuming to make over America’s health care system.
While this conduct, and much more like it, has been unseemly and at odds with the image that had been projected by modern-era First Ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt to Barbara Bush, none of it raised serious moral questions.
On the other hand, Clinton has done many things that have raised serious moral questions.
She was party to a sham commodities transaction that turned lead into gold. She stung lenders in the Whitewater scheme. She bought votes with criminal pardons issued by her husband. She lied about Chinese contributions to her political campaigns. She participated in slandering and intimidating women whom her husband had abused. She desecrated the presidency by selling the Lincoln Bedroom. She stole furniture and furnishings from the People’s House. And much more—conduct that without doubt rose to the level of moral wrongdoing.
That conduct is legion, and has been detailed on the public record for decades. Until recently, Hillary Clinton has lived with the benefits and detriments that have flowed from her behavior.
Lately, however, because of her campaign for the Democrat Party presidential nomination, the question has arisen whether Clinton’s decades-old character traits and conduct demonstrate that she is immoral or whether she is amoral—and whether there’s any important difference between the two concepts.
The answer is that there is a difference, a profound one, and it’s crucially important for the future of the United States of America that the voters of this country understand it.
We begin with the concept of “morality” itself, one which Americans instinctively understand. Rooted in fundamental notions of “right” and “wrong,” we know that it is right to pay our bills and protect our loved ones. Equally, we know that it is wrong to defraud creditors and abuse children.
Thus, immorality bespeaks of conduct antithetical to the “right”: lying to investigators, releasing terrorists, violating the law, attacking the defenseless, stealing from the President’s home—all conduct that Hillary Clinton participated in—as well as countless other actions that, by anyone’s definition, must be characterized as immoral. That this candidate for the presidency of the United States has acted immorally time and time again is clear beyond any argument (as the forthcoming presidential election is bound to dramatically reveal).
But what about “amorality”—which is defined as “being neither moral nor immoral; specifically: lying outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply; lacking moral sensibility . . . .” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.); emphasis in original.)
A person who is amoral does not accept any moral standard by which her conduct is to be judged by others. She simply does not care about the concept of morality, about right or wrong, in what she thinks, says, or does. Morality does not apply to such a person.
Thus, the questions: Does all of Hillary Clinton’s dubious conduct over the course of decades reflect a simple, garden-variety immorality—eschewing the right and doing the wrong? Or can it be said that so much immorality, and of such a nature, has a cumulative weight that lowers her conduct to the level of amorality? Does the leading candidate of the Democrat Party for the presidency of the United States, at root, care nothing for morality and deem it having no application to her?
Regrettably, Hillary Clinton’s record leaves no doubt about the answer. Hillary Clinton is manifestly immoral—but to such a degree that it amounts to her being amoral.
It is a sad day for America.
And it can get much worse.
